I finally decided to pull together my various scraps of scribblings from over the years, to try to create something resembling order. The first thing I found were notes from a conversation that I'd had with my grandmother at some point. She died in 1992, and the lined paper is yellowed and brittle, but more fascinating now than it clearly had been when I jotted down the items. I had to work a bit to remember what my notes actually referred to, so I thought I'd better elaborate on them now, while I still can.

Ginger

That's the inauspicious heading to the first set of notes. Ginger was the family cat when my aunts and uncles were children - which would have been in the 50's. I remember Aunt Bobbie sharing stories of pushing Ginger around the block in her baby buggy. Neighbors would stop and bend over the buggy to admire the "baby." She laughed as she recalled that they would inevitably draw back in shock when, instead of the plastic baby doll they expected to see, there lay an orange cat, bonnet on his head and blanket tucked around him. Everyone loved that cat, it seemed.

But the notes refer to other memories of Ginger that I only vaguely remember and would have entirely forgotten had I not written them down. Ginger's story at the Resler household, according to my notes, began when the neighbors moved away and gave the cat to Gramma. Ginger soon made herself at home and would open the old wooden screen door by leaping on it. From the outside, he would leverage his weight to swing it open, and from the inside would take a flying leap onto the screen, hanging on while it swung him into the great outdoors. Until one day when Ginger made a running dash for the door, planning on his usual graceful exit, only to find it securely locked. He bounced off of the screen and flew back from whence he came. A very undignified maneuver made even more so by the fact that it was witnessed by my grandmother, a young woman at the time, who was bent over, howling with laughter, tears running down her face.

This episode notwithstanding, Ginger was a suave man about town and was often seen catting about with a sweet little black and white cat - whom Gramma deemed to be his girlfriend. They could be seen hanging out in the yard or cleaning one another with wild abandoned. This went on for an unmarked period of time until one day the girlfriend retuned back to the house without him. Ginger was never seen again. A snowstorm had recently fallen and Gramma said that she figured he was likely killed in the storm. But shortly after that, she found Ginger - dead and having been obviously hit by a car. He had dragged himself back home. Gramma rocked in her chair and thoughtfully ticked her tongue. She loved her animals, be they squirrels, cats or dogs. And Ginger held a place in her heart.

My notes also tell of the joy of moving into her new home on Hiawatha Avenue - the same home that Ginger lived and died in. It was just across the street from Minnehaha Park, which was a wonderland of tennis courts, old depot buildings, abandoned train tracks and, of course, the falls. Hiawatha was a busy street even when I was a child, and we were mostly forbidden from crossing the street, though we did it anyway. But in 1952, when my dad was about 13 years old, they were just moving into that house. Gramma related to me how excited they were to be moving in. This home represented a life that was beyond her wildest dreams. And though it would, of course, now be 100% un-PC to do it, she said that she and her sister "Dotta" (Grace) ran through the house whooping and "Indian calling," so unrelenting was their joy.

But that home was not only in a busy neighborhood, it was also in an area of high crime and gangs. Just down the street were the bars where my Dad would "roll drunks" for money in his teen years.

My notes refer to an incident that Gramma related where she was chased on foot by a man. She ran, fast as lightening, and managed to get to her home and lock the door before he caught her. This was a recurring theme for my grandmother throughout her youth, and speaks as much to her own disabilities as to the culture at the time and her neighborhood's dangerousness. Other notes during that same conversation relate to her being chased in a car down the busy street as she came home one day. Life was full of fear for her even after marrying my grandfather.

But she touted my Grampa's strength and protectiveness, telling me about the time that some young men in a car harassed them. Grampa, driving like a maniac, almost forced them off the road and yelled at them. I wish I had kept more notes on that or remembered it, but that's all I have on that. On another occasion, Gramma and Grampa were together at the local convenience store and saw a young man being abused by other boys. Grampa grabbed the offending boys, "conked their heads together" and drove the sobbing child home.

Of course, my notes also refer to one of the most oft-repeated stories that Gramma would tell. When she was 17 years old, her mother was dying of stomach cancer. Gramma said that her mother told her that HER mother, who had passed away years earlier,  visited her to tell her that in three days she would return to "take her home." Three days later, she found her mother dead. I heard this story many times over the years and Gramma would tell me the reasons for the cancer, which usually involved the time her mother got her arm caught in the mangle of an old washing machine.

Anyway, it's time to give the cat her shot and feed the animals. I just wanted to take a moment to share this little scrap of paper from the heap.